Caribbean Baptists migrating to US ‘not fitting in’

Caribbean Baptist immigrants have difficulty fitting into Baptist churches in the United States. This was revealed at a recent conference of Caribbean immigrants in New York City.

The April National Gathering of Caribbean Diaspora Baptist clergy, leaders and churches was billed as “a missional event to acknowledge and initiate discussion on the emergence, contribution and role of Baptists in the continuum of the Caribbean Diaspora.”

A common theme expressed by Caribbean immigrants at the conference was the difficulty to find a “church home” upon migrating into the U.S. Raymond Anglin, a general secretary of the Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU) during the 1980s, stated that he “experienced a kind of culture shock upon moving to the United States.” 

The Baptist churches he encountered in Florida and Georgia were “different from his experience in Jamaica in terms of authority, leadership, the attitude to and role of women, and in understanding of training.”

Anglin, who said he now “has a fulfilling ministry as a Presbyterian pastor,” indicated that his background in Jamaica prepared him for his current situation, as it “gave him an ecumenical dimension of ministry.”

Delroy Murdock, pastor of a United Methodist Church in New York and a former Baptist pastor from Jamaica, said that, upon coming to the U.S., he “could not find a Baptist church that looked anything like those in Jamaica.” Edward Jenkins, another Methodist pastor in New York who was a Baptist pastor in the Caribbean, said he sees himself “as a Baptist in a Methodist church.”

Karl Johnson, general secretary of the JBU, said the JBU is currently exploring ways of engaging in missions with Baptists in the Diaspora. He acknowledged that “the JBU has not grasped the opportunity presented by Caribbean people in the Diaspora.” 

He said the JBU had “dropped the ball and needed to repent and return to a missions consciousness.”

Samuel Simpson, a Jamaican immigrant to the U.S., was honored for helping to pioneer the formation of Baptist churches that ministered to Caribbean immigrants in New York City, beginning in the 1960s. He recently retired as pastor of the Bronx and Wake Eden Baptist churches, two of the churches he founded.  

(BWA)